Obsidian
by chrissie
Summary: Tezuka, Fuji. For reasons too lengthy to explain at this juncture, Tezuka turns into a statue. Spinoff of Sai's East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
1. Obsidian i

Obsidian (i)

Fuji returns that night when the short hand of the living room clock is just beginning to pass two. He'd been snagged into beer and karaoke by some of the executives in his department -- not an uncommon occurence, but one that doesn't grow less irksome with repitition, and has him toying with the idea of climbing further up the corporate ladder just to free up his evenings. It passes quickly; he and ambition are still on distant terms.

Aniki doesn't dream, Yuuta is wont to say with scorn, and Fuji never denies it, just smiles and nods and politely doesn't mention the fact that he's still pulling in more yen than his brother, whose first business venture floundered and is now working overtime at a low-paying, little-known firm, struggling each month in a race with the bills. Yuuta won't accept the family's money -- his principles have remained remarkably sound over the years -- but Fuji and Yumiko find ways to smooth his path, and they gloss the matter over into non-existence.

"Tadaima," he calls out to the shadows of the empty apartment. A shower would be wise, but he is too tired at the moment for wisdom. Shoes off, tie off, a plum from the fridge that he washes without drying his hands off afterwards, and he walks barefooted towards his study dripping a trail of water behind him.

He calls it his study because it's neither bedroom nor living room, but in actuality it's just a place for him to store those things he doesn't care to display in public: trophies from his youth, family pictures, artwork he'd played around with in college that was almost always some variety of sand or stone, broad strokes of black or beige against blue while his teachers despaired of convincing him to work with anything besides contrast.

He calls it his study, but the name he gives it in his mind is Tezuka's Room, where no one else is allowed. Tezuka has always been able to dominate any space he occupies, and retains this quality even through the metamorphosis.

Fuji approaches the life-size obsidian statue that makes up the centerpiece of the room. Detailed craftmanship depicts a boy on the cusp of adolescence, corners of his mouth tucked down, gaze falling blankly across a photo of the Sahara on the opposite wall. It appears to be finished, complete and perfect, but Fuji knows that there's a small chip missing in the left heel, and before that chip is found, Tezuka Kunimitsu will remain locked in stone, shoved in a storage room with the other mementos of his past.

"Sorry, I know you don't like it when I come home so late. I'll try to get away earlier next time. Did you miss me?"

Tezuka, of course, doesn't answer, but he's never been talkative, so there isn't much to miss. Fuji slides a hand down the side of the Seigaku regular uniform turned black, takes a bite from the plum in the other. It is too sour a fruit for his tastes, but Tezuka used to like them once upon a time, and he always keeps a bag in his refrigerator to consume with a grimace that dissolves his everpresent smile.

"They were on sale at the supermarket, so I bought a bit more than usual. Thoughtless of me, I suppose; I don't know how I'm going to finish them alone. Would you like a bite?"

The silence counts, he decides, as an assent and he reaches up, crushing the flesh of the plum against Tezuka's lips and watching them glisten even further with stained juice. Leans in and laps at the tart liquid to taste a mixture of plum and rock and memory.

Tezuka would never have allowed this while living. He remembers Tezuka's sobriety, the way he held himself aloof as if physical contact was something distasteful, his frown when one of the sempais in the club was caught making out in the eqipment shed -- but following on the heels of that comes the aftermath of their last match, Tezuka leaning over him, the wires of the fence digging into his back, thoughts sliding through his mind with unnerving clarity: 'he's going to kiss me' and then 'I think I want him to', the second more terrifying than the first.

Fuji closes his eyes. He thinks he's still a little bit drunk.

The stone is too cold to make the illusion convincing; he's had lovers in the past, girls from work, boys who blush when he catches their eyes on him, and it's from them that he learns the touch of his skin is cool, 'like a damp towel on the brow when you have a fever,' explained Mariko from Accounting while tracing spirals down his arms. Tezuka's chill is neither soothing nor comforting, more like being tossed into an ice water bath while burning up, and Fuji presses closer against him, shivering, ignoring the edges digging into his skin, thinking that it's just like Tezuka to excel him on every point.

He tosses the rest of the plum over his shoulder, hears the rustle of plastic as it lands in the wastebasket. Three points.

The juice has been licked clean by now, and he transfers his attentions to the bridge of Tezuka's nose, his knife-slash cheeks, down to the throat left bare by an open collar, having to standing on tiptoe in the process. "Ne, Tezuka, you're not going to make me do all the work? How rude of you."

'Fuji.' He supplies sound and special effects by himself, imagining Tezuka's sigh and frown, the resignation in his voice. Fuji enjoys eliciting that reaction from people, goes out of his way to do so, but no one ever achieves that exact shade of sufferance, the precise intonation he hears in his mind. No one he's met in his twenty-eight years of life has ever come close to Tezuka Kunimitsu at fourteen, whose image is the one that comes to mind when he contemplates the word perfection. 'Fuji, don't.'

"Don't _you_ be such an old stick in the mud," he murmurs against Tezuka's unyielding abdomen, hands sliding down creases in the jacket that will never, now, be straightened. In his mind he is still fourteen, and can say such things to Tezuka without sounding like a living joke.

Fourteen, and summer has just arrived, golden and sticky-sweet like the honey Yuuta likes to stir into drinks. The sun is high, the sky unmarred blue, and Tezuka stands on a grassy knoll, watching the children below swing their racquets in a drill exercise. There is a hint of wistfulness in his gaze to those who know what to look for, and Fuji desires nothing more at this moment than to wipe it away.

He uses the advantage of surprise to push Tezuka down on the grass, laughing at the dichotomy of Tezuka's disapproving expression with his lopsided glasses, straddling Tezuka's waist and being greatly daring with his hands; fourteen, and he has never taken a lover, the knowledge that guides his movements snatched from dreams of a longer, emptier life, but worth it in the way they make Tezuka bite his lips, grip hard, turn his face into the grass amidst a flurry of dragonfly wings.

"Don't think," he says, pressing a kiss in the crook of Tezuka's elbow, "about anything at all," and takes his own advice while moving down, down, down. The chants of the first-years can still reach their ears, carried by the wind: "One-two! One-two!"

The pleasure draws out like an uncoiling rope, fluid and continuous, stretching from him to Tezuka towards a distant and unknown infinity. He is plucking this half-grown child from his innocence and doesn't stop, doesn't care; in this universe with its fragile eggshell walls, he is innocent himself. "Tezuka," he says as he scrapes his palms against stone, "Tezuka" as he moves, "Tezuka Tezuka Tezuka" in another endless line until the two merge and pleasure becomes simply that utterance of Tezuka's name, the curl of his tongue, "Tezuka" as the sky falls apart like a broken mirror with its myriad reflections, and Fuji comes the closest he's ever been to that concept called love.

When it's over he slumps to the floor, cheek pressed tightly against Tezuka's thigh, eyes still closed against afterimages of sharp edges and glint of glass. His body hurts all over. The flush of warmth brought by consummation fades quickly, leeched away by stone, and he wonders how he looks at this moment, a salaryman closing in on thirty, kneeling before the statue of a young boy in an attitude of worship and debauchery. He wonders how it will be when Tezuka wakes to a generation stretching between them.

Pushing himself up, away, heading for the shower that's become a necessity rather than an option, he puts these questions from his mind. _Aniki doesn't dream_, but Yuuta is wrong, after all, about this and so many other things. Tezuka is Fuji's dream, the one certainty he clutches at in the eddies of a shifting world.

The shower is quick, and his sheets are soft and silken as he sinks his bruised body into them gratefully. The alarm is set for six-thirty. Work tomorrow, more spreadsheets, more backstabbing co-workers, more Hamasaki Ayumi songs over cans of beer that he never drinks, but for now there is only sleep and the chance to dream.

Tezuka beckons down the road, standing straight and solitary, face tilted away from the sun, and Fuji runs to him, allowing his breath to quicken and the wind to tear his hair into a mess. "Thank you for waiting," he'll say when he reaches Tezuka, and Tezuka will lift an eyebrow, turn away, continue down his path, but Fuji will grab his hand before it's out of reach, and while the rest of the world revolves around money and fact and an endless parade of practical concerns, they'll walk the rest of the way together.


	2. Obsidian ii

Obsidian (ii)

"I'm only doing this because you were a marginally interesting person," he told the pile of crumbled rock at his feet, before stealing an unused cardboard box from the equipment shed and gathering the shattered bits of Tezuka into it. Tezuka's edges cut his fingers twice in the process, but the blood didn't show on black.

The box went into a corner of his room, and Fuji went back to studying for midterms.

There was talk when Tezuka stopped appearing in school. Tezuka's parents came by, but Fuji didn't see them; he heard about it from Oishi, afterwards, who, as the only sort-of-falls-into-the-friend category Tezuka had had, was called into the principal's office for a meeting.

"They're devastated," he said, looking close to devastation himself. "I don't -- do you think he was kidnapped?"

"Maybe the kidnappers are waiting for ransom," Eiji said. "Maybe they left a note and the note got lost and they didn't know it got lost so they thought Tezuka's parents were unwilling to pay up so they cut Tezuka's -- "

"_Eiji_," Oishi said. 

"Maybe he decided to run away," said a third-year, walking past. "Those young hotshots are always like that -- can't take the pressure. Yamato was too easy on him."

Oishi looked like he was about to hit someone and get himself tossed out of the club, so Fuji coughed and smiled and invited everyone for a round of sushi after school. The sushi ended up on the house, but Fuji was the one who'd discovered that Kawamura's family owned a sushi shop in the first place, and it was really quite fitting that all the credit gravitated to him.

It only figured, he thought, trying to save his swordfish sashimi from Eiji's wandering chopsticks, that Tezuka missing was more trouble than Tezuka present.

After returning home, he dragged the box out from the extra sheets and pillowcases in his closet.

He opened the box. The fragments were still jumbled together. On the top layer, two almost symmetrical pieces lay side by side, their edges slightly rounded.

Probably the tip of Tezuka's nose. He picked them up, one in each hand, and put them together.

There was a faint tingle in his fingertips, and then the two pieces became one.

"Interesting," he said. 

What he didn't expect was that they'd elevate _him_ into the position of tennis club star.

"You've got talent, kid. You belong on the team," Buchou said, sounding quite pleased with himself for being so fair-minded and unblinded by prejudice.

I know I do, he thought, irritated. It didn't mean he was obligated to flash it around like a medal.

"This is all your fault," he told the Tezuka-bust upon returning home. It really was a bust now, whole and complete from the split ends of hairs to thin shoulders, very lifelike. "This would never have happened if you were here."

_And whose fault is_ that? he could imagine Tezuka-bust responding coolly.

"Shush it," he said. "You're just a head."

But he practiced harder than usual, and he played harder than usual, and when the Regional competitions came around, he won every game they put him in.

Saeki caught him taking a breather from the celebrations after Rokkaku's defeat. "Who are you and what have you done to Shuusuke?" he said, squinting in Fuji's direction. Fuji tossed a sweaty, smelly towel at him.

"I thought a change of pace might be educational." He poured half the contents of his water bottle over his hands. "Sorry if it didn't work out for your dreams of championship."

"I'm happy to see that you kept his sweet thoughtfulness intact."

Fuji drew one wet hand across the back of his neck, and let the water drip down his spine. "Wouldn't want to disappoint."

Saeki pulled a face at him. "You know, I told my teammates you were easy-going and laid-back, and wouldn't exert yourself playing Singles Three." 

"So are they taking you for a traitor now, or a fool?" 

"They're taking me for a poor bastard with a devil for a friend. And they think you have a shot at the Nationals." 

"They're too kind," Fuji murmured, and put on his 'harmless' face.

Saeki snorted. "Well, you go ahead and educate Yukimura of Rikkaidai, and I won't tell everyone that Fuji Shuusuke's been replaced by an alien pod-person. I'm sure there are qualification rules concerning that sort of thing."

Seigaku won and won and won until they came up against Rikkai, and then they lost.

Fuji didn't.

"You're a bad influence," he told Tezuka. "Really, you are. Now they want to make me captain."

Tezuka didn't say anything, even in Fuji's imagination, which was just as well. It would have been a shame to shatter him again after all that hard work.

"You can't expect me to go that far. You're not an idealist in that sense." 

The statue had the jagged beginnings of a chest, now, and disconnected hands and feet. It was still dwarfed by the pile of unsorted fragments inside the box.

Sometimes Fuji found himself wondering if he actually intended to complete it.

Why should he? If Tezuka wasn't an idealist in one sense, Fuji wasn't a philanthropist in any.

In the meantime, he talked to the head of the life it was missing out on. One night he dreamed of performing the Dance of the Seven Veils for its benefit as an apology; afterwards, he tried to scrub his brain clean.

It was the summer he discovered Wilde. _Tsubame Gaeshi_, he named the first of his three party tricks. The Swallow's Return.

When he succeeded the position of captain upon his promotion to third year, there were no objections voiced, none at all. 

It was pure bad luck that he'd stepped out to take a phone call and when Yuuta chose to enter his room in search of him.

"Fuck," Yuuta said.

Fuji looked at him and he blushed, but didn't back off. 

"FUCK," he said again, loudly. "This is -- Aniki. You're crazy. Officially. You've gone round the bend. Nuts. Totally bonkers. This is our cue to call in the men with the straitjackets."

"Is my art project offending you?" He couldn't help being pleased. Yuuta didn't look broken-hearted, only disgusted, which suggested that he'd gotten over the ill-formed crush in freshman year that was responsible for this mess in the first place.

One problem solved, at the very least.

"You didn't have anything to do with that disappearance, did you?" Yuuta peered suspiciously at the statue. It was complete all the way down to the torso now, with one arm attached; the other was still missing an elbow joint. "Please tell me I'm not going to break it apart and find bones hidden in there."

Fuji smiled on his brother, and watched Yuuta's Adam's apple bob up, then down. "I've grown used to having company," he said. "If you take this one apart, I might have to replace it with something else. ...Marble would become you, don't you think?"

Yuuta took a step back. "You wouldn't do that."

He felt himself suffused with pangs of brotherly love.

"You have beautiful bone structure," he said, and waited for the door to bang shut. 

Tezuka _did_ have beautiful bone structure. It was a problem.

"You owe a great deal to your genes," he said. "It would have been much easier to leave you for the janitor if you'd been ugly." 

They won the Nationals, with much of the credit going to the snippy kid from America, who'd been great fun to whip into shape. Echizen was a lifesaver. Fuji left the club in his hands and felt inexpressibly lightened, free as a bird that was free.

That happy state of affairs lasted for almost three months.

Then he found himself enrolled in one of Tokyo's most academically competitive high schools, using all the spare minutes in the cracks of his schedule to study. It was like the unfolding of a very unimaginative nightmare. He wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but he knew where the blame could be laid.

"You know, you're not going to get your way this time," he said, facing off with the statue. The statue gazed back serenely.

It had knees now, but no calves, so he'd taken to leaning it against the wall, right next to the team picture taken after their victory in the Nationals, where it looked happier.

It _should_ be happy. He'd done more for it in two years than he'd done for himself in sixteen. Enough was enough, he told himself. He'd put his foot down. No more. He applied for a transfer back to Seigaku.

He was rejected.

_He_ was rejected.

Re-reading the letter a with a growing sense of bemused incredulity, he wondered who it was he'd pissed off. With the team and Echizen and the entrance exams in third year, he'd had less energy to spend on smoothing ruffled feathers and more opportunity to ruffle them in the first place, but surely it wasn't enough to warrant this?

Rejection was a new experience for him, and though he was all about trying everything at least once, this particular treat, he thought, was better kept to just the once.

"Look," he told Tezuka finally. "I'll cut you a deal, okay? You let me live my life instead of your own, and I'll -- "

The blankness in Tezuka's eyes, he decided, could very well be taken for agreement. 

Next morning, he spent two hours composing a letter to Seigaku's headmaster. Yuuta caught him at it and pretended to look displeased. Yumiko caught him at it and made subtle digs regarding the fickleness of teenagers. He ignored them both.

The following week, he received his letter of admittance. 

During daytime there was school, Eiji, classmates. Echizen would come around occasionally to challenge him to a game, and he would dodge out with wilder and less believable pretenses each time. It was almost like old times.

After school, in the evenings, there was Tezuka. He didn't bother stuffing the statue into the closet anymore -- for one thing, it no longer fit. He'd stopped asking friends over, and Yuuta still turned pale at suggested fraternal heart-to-hearts in his room.

His three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle was almost complete, life-size and exquisite. A perfect replica of Tezuka Kunimitsu, age thirteen. The only remaining flaw wasn't even visible from most vantage points: a small chip in the heel.

He'd turned the box upside down and shaken it; he'd unfolded it until it was no longer a box, just two rectangles of battered cardboard. Nothing turned up.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I must have left it in the gravel," and felt a small lump in his throat as he said it.

Tezuka didn't look accusing. He looked as he always did, the confidante of Fuji's troubles, which were few, and fancies, which were many. Tezuka the statue, he'd discovered, was a much better conversationalist than Tezuka the person.

Sometimes, Fuji would twine his arms around the torso, press his cheek against the hard mineral, and whisper secrets into Tezuka's cold stone ears. 

Safer than rushes, he knew.

Safer than just about anything. 

Sometimes he would remember a flicker of feeling, the lump in his throat when he realized the puzzle was incomplete and there were no pieces left. Pain, like something lodged there, small and hard and jagged, but showing no blood.

Sometimes, in his dreams, he opened his mouth and coughed. 

"Are there any girls you like?" Eiji asked, both of them splayed out on the rooftop underneath the sun.

"Not really," he said. 

"Are there any boys you like?"

"...Not really."

"You'll be lonely like that." Eiji sounded on the verge of drifting off.

_"I'll give you your life back. When the last unattached piece of you is in my hands, I'll put it in and let you go."_

"Not really," he said again, and closed his eyes. 

prince of tennis main comment  



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